Open Books, Strong Hearts

Written By Leigh Gray

Sick Days

I spent last week sick with something that seemed like a fairy tale curse, as if one of my nemeses out there demanded “may the ocean drain from her nose every second she is awake and her head be as if stuffed with cotton batting.” Once that was over I had three days of migraines. Meanwhile, we are sick on a national level and that’s not so easily healed, especially when we receive fresh wounds every day.

This isn’t something that’s going to magically be better tomorrow. I wish so hard that it was. We know it’s going to take time and care and tenacity, as well as individual periods of rest so we don’t burn out. Seeing the people of Minneapolis form a true community despite the incredible dangers is a light in the darkness. We can keep that light going and help it burn brighter. Please call your representatives and donate if you can. 5 Calls makes it easy to find your representatives and gives you a format you can work from for your call.

Pain Relief

The world is so big and overwhelming—relentless social media and TV, massive corporations merging and gobbling up smaller ones, people who personify greed and carelessness in positions of immense power and lying to us daily—but when you back away from all that noise there are fundamental (actual) truths that remain: love still exists in this world and we are stronger together. When I need a reminder of that I turn to the wonderful people in my life and also, of course, to books.

On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert this week, Colbert asked the author George Saunders if he thought that fiction was “not good at a time like this because it’s a form of escapism.” Saunders said, “My experience with fiction is that it frees up everything. You don’t have to be accurate to anything except the soul. So in that sense it’s so free. I think that in itself is very powerful. I have the feeling with fiction, a writer can reach out, and even if the person is very different from you, you can hit something essential.”

In the slow format of the written word, whether page by page or read aloud, we connect with the author. We can also connect with everyone else who has read it.

On a recent episode of the Ologies, the host Alie Ward mentioned how she’d just read her husband’s favorite book, Heroes Die, and he’s reading one of hers, My Side of the Mountain. She suggested we ask our friends and family “what their favorite book is or start a little book club where you take turns reading each other’s favorite comfort book” as “it’s just kind of a nice thing to do and it helps you get to know the people that you already know even better.”

I would love to get to know you better. What’s your favorite book? What have you read recently that you loved? What would you like someone to know about it? Did you have a favorite line?

Could you swap favorites with a friend and use it as an excuse to meet up for a coffee a month from now? I started to list out a “few” past favorites and after a dozen realized I was pushing my luck, so for now I’ll just say an old favorite I’m planning to reread is Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede. Other books I recently read and loved include:

My mom is the one who lent me Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop. It was so nice as I read to be able to drop her a line saying “I’m loving this.” My writing group is planning a book discussion for Project Hail Mary—and sure, maybe it’s because the movie is coming out, but I think it’s also because so many of us have been reading it and recommending it to each other. Lucas is currently reading Cabin by Patrick Hutchinson, a book I recommended to him, and he wants to loan it to his dad next.

You might say, “Leigh, TV series are where it’s at for people these days.” And yeah, that’s not not true. My brother and I bond over Taskmaster. I can’t wait to watch the next season of Severance with Lucas. My mom and I are Miss Scarlet fans. I have made many people watch Dancing with the Birds. If you want a K-drama recommendation, you know where to find me. There’s a lot to love there.

But I think books offer us a special type of mindfulness. We live vicariously through the characters and understand their emotions in a way that I’m not sure we can through the screen. Reading gives our brains a break from the outside world, but it also strengthens our hearts.

Kuleana & Rainforest Pu’uhonua

This month’s book was Kuleana: A Story of Family, Land, and Legacy by Sara Kehaulani Goo. Goo tells us, “Kuleana is a word you don’t hear much as a visitor to Hawai’i, but you do if you’re a local. It comes from Native Hawaiians’ strong identity and relationship with the land that was both their responsibility and privilege to take care of.” (3) Throughout the book, Goo’s longing for Hawai’i is clear. Her grandmother’s unfulfilled desire to return to her family land is heartbreaking, especially when Goo describes her grandmother’s plans for a house and a little garden. I found her grandmother’s story, the current reality of native Hawaiians forced from their land by the ever-climbing costs to live there, and the conversations Goo has with others like her hula teacher to be the most powerful parts of this book. But I also found the timeline and logic around combatting taxes on her family land difficult to follow, and ultimately think there could have been more substance to this book while maintaining the page length.

What stuck with you the most from Kuleana?

When I had enough mental presence to read while I was sick, I also delved into Rainforest Pu’uhonua by Kahikāhealani Wight. I haven’t had a chance to finish reading it yet, but I can say this book is full of gorgeous, vivid writing that combines English and Hawaiian (a glossary of common Hawaiian words in the book is available in the back), as well as beautiful photographs and illustrations.

I love the way so much of Wight’s writing is grounded in nature. When she watches two nēnē (Hawaiian geese) contemplating a flight into the cloud-covered Kīlauea caldera, her thoughts were particularly timely for a major life decision Lucas and I had to make this month. “Standing there I saw a pair of nēnē geese who also seemed as disconcerted and disoriented as I felt. They fretted on the edge of the trail, worried about flying off into the cloud that was now climbing higher, its thick white skin and opacity undiminished, only rising higher, up past the lip of the trail, going straight up but not spreading outward over the landscape.” One nēnē flies in, but as for the other: “It took long minutes more till he found the courage to fly into the caldera encasing cloud, the urge to follow his mate overpowering his fear of the unknown.” In the end: “I had no further sight or sound of that pair of nēnē, those mates so tied together by instinct that one followed the other into the impenetrable unknown. But they stirred me to the depths of my soul and made me think that maybe trusting life, trusting instinct and the deep tug of connection, are gifts we hold far too lightly and take way too much for granted.” (84-85)

You can find Rainforest Pu’uhonua at Bess Press.

Hardcover

Previously I mentioned that any links to movies and K-dramas will go to letterboxd, rather than IMDB. I am also now linking books in this newsletter to hardcover instead of goodreads, which like IMDB is owned by Amazon. (I’m currently maintaining both hardcover and goodreads accounts, but would like to move off goodreads completely.) If you’re interested in being friends on hardcover you can find me here: hardcover.app/@lagray. (And on letterboxd at letterboxd.com/queenleaf.)

February’s Book

If you’ve been wondering how our backyard friends are surviving these frigid temps, join me in finding the answers with Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival by Bernd Heinrich this coming month. February also means Valentine’s Day! I love this holiday—the cheery pinks and reds in winter, handmade or beautifully illustrated cards, delightfully dumb puns, and, of course, the chocolate. I’m currently hatching a Valentine’s plan for Lucas that centers around how he and I “survive” the winter. I’ll let you know how that turns out next time. See you then!

Image Credits
Doodle by Leigh Gray
All photos by Leigh or Lucas Gray

Citations
Saunders, George. (Guest). Colbert, Stephen. (Host). (2026, January 28). George Saunders On Revisions, Writing For Ghosts, And The Joy Of Reading Fiction In Tough Times. On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. CBS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8GE8_rFS-Q

Ward, Alie. (Host). (2026, January 28). Asinology (DONKEYS) [Audio podcast episode]. In Ologies. https://www.alieward.com/ologies/asinology

Goo, Sara Kehaulani. Kuleana: A Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawai’i. Flatiron Books, 2025.

Wight, Kahikāhealani Wight. Rainforest Pu’uhonua. Ka Honu Press, 2015. (Distributed by Bess Press)

Leigh Gray
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Winter Language